


Five Times Bucky Barnes Was The Better Man

by historymiss



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 20:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And you thought: they're used to it. But that was how those who suffered less always thought about those who suffered more, that they were used to it, that they no longer felt it as you did. Nobody ever got used to it. All they learned to do was to stop letting it show.<br/>-James Meek, The People's Act of Love</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Bucky Barnes Was The Better Man

1\. 

Becca doesn't let go of his hand the whole day. The funeral's a strange affair: Bucky's plagued by the nagging sense he's done this all before. Stood in this spot, listened to these hymns. The only difference is now he's a couple inches taller, his suit doesn't quite fit so good any more and Becca's got her dress done up wrong because neither of them thought to check. He spots it in the church and feels a sudden, hot rush of shame.

He should have checked.

They fold the flag up on the coffin and give it to him. 

"Not junior any more, eh son?"

One of his dad's mates from the base tries to be jovial, and Bucky holds the flag in one hand and feels his sister's grip tighten in the other, and he thinks _Fuck you_ and he thinks _the hell am I supposed to do with this?_ , but really he just swallows, his mouth dry from crying.

"No sir." 

His eyes linger on the stone that's got his name.

"I'm gonna have to get used to being James Buchanan Barnes."

2\. 

Things look different from the floor. He can see the iron arches of the bedframe above him, a darker black against the gloom of the dormitory, hear the irregular rumble of Steve's breathing somewhere above.

Wheeze. Then the stop, the one that makes his heart skip: then snore. Then wheeze again.

He almost smiles in the dark before he feels rather than hears the floorboards creak, and his hand shoots out to grab an ankle.

"Goin' somewhere, Trevor?"

The other boy struggles in his grip.

"Leave off, Bucky, i just wanted to give little Stevie a surprise is all."

"Well you're not gonna." Bucky's grip tightens, he sits up and raises a fist. "You leave Rogers alone. He's sick, alright?"

(Over on the bed, Steve's eyes are open. He can hear every word)

"Why do you even care anyway?" Trevor shakes his foot loose and retreats, grumbling. Bucky watches him to the door, then turns over and goes back to sleep.

3\. 

Steve doesn't seem to think about the consequences of the table. Bucky didn't expect him to. He stands up and walks, even though all he wants to do is lie down and maybe close his eyes (not forever, no, just for a little bit, just until the world started making sense again), he rolls up his sleeves and keeps going, because that's what he's always done.

He walks next to Steve out of the HYDRA base, just one foot in front of the other, one down, one more to go, all the way back to camp- or that's the plan, anyway, until he doubles over and collapses.

"You're an idiot." 

He comes to to Steve forcing a canteen in his hand, the rumble of a HYDRA truck beneath them. Bucky forces a sickly smile.

"I learned from the best." He takes the water and drinks, sees the rest of them, Dugan and Dernier and Falsworth, all clustered around like goddamn mother hens and it's all he can do not to laugh.

"I'm fine, guys, really."

Steve gives him the Look, the one that used to make him look like a terrified dormouse but now seems right (finally) on his face, all serious eyes and granite jaw.

"Come on," Bucky laughs, but it's more of a rasp. "Just give me a minute, willya?"

And Steve sighs in unison with Dugan and the rest and it's all Bucky can do not to haul off and punch him, forget the new muscles, so he lies back and sighs too, wearier and more bitter, and decides to play the long game. If this is who he has to be, that's who he is.

"Fine. But nobody's kissing it better, got it?"

4\. 

He makes the decision to love. He can't explain it: couldn't put it into words, in English or Russian, if he was asked. But the decision was utterly, wholly his, though where it came from is unclear, and what, exactly, it means is yet to be seen. 

Love is a fragile thing, here in the Red Rooms.

Instead he twines his fingers around hers in the dark, and listens to her breath quicken and steady, and the answering pressure from her own grip, imagined rather than felt through the metal of his hand. 

They don't talk, because words can mean anything. He looks at her across the training grounds, in briefing rooms, as they move together through corridors and across rooftops, gives her that special little smirk, the one that's hers alone.

She answers it with one of her own, and when they kiss, sudden and unexpected in the shadows, he can feel her mouth move against his in the same half-smile.

They make the choice to smile. To love. To kiss. Neither of them know what it means. But they make the choice, freely, nonetheless. 

 

5\. 

Here is how he lives.

He gets up. Leaves Natasha in the bed, or doesn't, depending on the day. Stands in front of the mirror. He takes in everything: forces himself to look.

The eyes sunken in their sockets. The scars across his body. Some he remembers getting. Some he doesn't. The tangle of skin and steel where flesh meets metal. The shake in his hands that only goes away when he's holding a gun.

"Today," he says, sometimes aloud, sometimes not- sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian, "Today I will be a better man."

Sometimes he isn't. Sometimes he is. But every day he makes the promise.


End file.
